We are pleased to inform you that the Arizona Medical Board voted yesterday to resume processing and issuing initial licenses despite the uncertainty in how criminal background checks will be handled. It has been a lengthy discussion this past summer and fall over how Senate Bill 1380 would be interpreted with respect to the new fingerprinting provision. For those of you who have been tracking this issue, the FBI rejected the Medical Board's proposed amendment that would have retained the confidentiality of criminal history record information and thus, the Board felt it was unable to comply with the law set forth in SB1380.

Maricopa County Medical Society (MCMS) worked closely with the Arizona Medical Association (ArMA) to help provide the Medical Board with information that assisted them in the decision making process. We are especially grateful to those Medical Board members that took the lead in finding a resolution. The official news release from ArMA providing a higher level of detail is available here.

While there is still work to do in finding a solution for how to complete background checks, we are relieved to see the process moving forward again. MCMS is currently under contract to assist the Medical Board with an audit of 3,056 licenses issued between 2011 and 2014, and we have offered to assist the Medical Board going forward. We will keep you all informed if any further actions are taken by the Medical Board with respect to how criminal background checks will be conducted.